The Astral Empire: Abh, enstatted (except not)

(Disclaimer: the Abh are ultimately the work of Hiroyuki Morioka. This adaptation to the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons deviates significantly from the original — seriously, this is just me thinking out loud.)

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Abh (first draft)

Average Height: 5'5" - 6'1" (165 - 185 dagh)
Ability Scores: +2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares
Vision: Low-light

Languages: Baronh (takes the place of Common in this setting)
Skill Bonuses: +2 Arcana, +2 History
Abh Education: You gain training in two additional skills selected from the skill list in chapter 5 of the 4e Player's Handbook.
Froch (Sensory Organ): You may search for secret doors as a standard action, instead of taking a full minute, with no penalty. In addition, you may take the Blind-Fight feat at paragon tier instead of epic tier, as long as you meet its other prerequisites.
Immortal Origin: You are considered an "immortal", a native of the Astral Sea, for purposes of effects that relate to creature origin. This does not grant actual immortality.

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Hmm. So the above transcription of the Abh is shiny in places, but underpowered overall: they gain a slight edge as wizards or warlords, like the eladrin, but no tertiary class. The secret doors trick, while possibly attractive to grognards, isn't actually much help: secret doors are likely to be very rare in this setting. Immortal Origin is worth exactly nothing, at least right now — the only extant creature-origin-dependent effect appears to be the Magic Circle ritual.

The Blind-Fight bit can take a bit of the sting out of fighting invisible melee enemies, but it won't help you for at least ten levels; and there's a good possibility that astral combat will be mostly long-range anyway, rendering it useless. It could be dropped and replaced with a bonus to detect invisible creatures or the like if this is the case, or even just given outright.

A better option would be to give the Abh some navigational trick while in the Astral Sea — e.g., the daily power of a sextant of the planes, or somesuch — or a vehicular combat skill. (Although right now there are no particular rules concerning ship-to-ship combat or vehicle maneuvering, and it is possible that there never will be.)

... in fact, as written, except for the highly conditionally useful Blind-Fight bit, the Abh have no abilities useful in combat, much less any actual combat-usable power like, oh, every other race has. (Even humans get an extra at-will from their class.) This fits ill in 4e; honestly, you're probably better off using the stats for eladrin, elves, or githzerai, possibly with a stat-and-bonuses swap than that.

I'll have to think about this.